Royal Family embarks on domain name grab on behalf of lesser royals

Buckingham Palace has secured around 30 addresses related to various members of the Royal Family in a move that could signal the creation of a range of new websites linked to lesser members of the clan.

The IT department secured the addresses, which include princessroyal.org, princessbeatrice.org and earlandcountessofwessex.com, in order that the Royal Family’s names are protected for possible future use.

“We have purchased a number of URLs. The rationale is to prevent them being used by other organisations or individuals, and to ensure their availability for potential use by the Royal Family,” Buckingham Palace told The Times.

Work to secure the registration of more royal domain names is reportedly ongoing and commentators on the Royal Family have conflicting views on whether the move is a good thing or not.

Joe Little, editor of Majesty, stated that he has doubts about the Royal Family using the domain names themselves and added that he was “bemused” at why it wanted to “hoover them up.”

This contrasted with Richard Fitzwilliam, a commentator on royalty, who stated that it was an obvious move and praised its use of social media in the past.

“One of the secrets of the Palace’s success is that they have been so aware of social media. There is much scope for confusion when it comes to websites and names. If you had someone who was able to have a website that appeared to be attached to a royal person, and was not, it could lead to embarrassment and confusion. This makes total sense,” Fitzwilliam added.

It was only last month that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as well as Prince Harry reportedly set up firms to protect their intellectual property rights and it reflects a growing protective attitude when it comes to Royal identities.

The Royal Family has been active online for some years and its Twitter account reached 5,600 followers as far back as July 2009 and has grown to some 635,000 followers since, and in addition to this The Queen has her own Facebook page.